Photographic research

This query from Elena Miles, Master's student studying at Nottingham Trent Uni in England: For my undergraduate dissertation I explored literacy in children's everyday lives by distributing disposable cameras to a group of 8 year old children and asking them to photograph what they deemed significant. I am keen to develop with this method of research for my museum studies thesis. I am thinking of something along the lines of providing 15 children with disposable cameras during a museum trip and asking them to document the highlights of their visit. Aside from the obvious issues of multiple gate-keepers and other sensitivities I was wondering if you knew of any previous research along similar lines. I am aware of the flickr application and of visitor response cards, but it is the photographic research which I would particularly wish to focus on.

Hi Elena. This is a fertile field for study I believe. We did a study in 2003 called the Museum I'd like. In that young people from a number of the schools across Sydney were introduced to concepts of learning beyond the classroom and subsequently photographed aspects of, and experiences in, the Museum that "helped" or "got in the way" of their learning. Photographs were assembled in annotated posters that were subsequently analysed across the sample in order to unpack the major themes. I don't have that report to hand but will add a summary here when I get to it. I can send you the paper given at the British Educational Research Association Conference about the project. Subsequent to this I uploaded photos of the posters to my Flickr site to see if that way of sharing would work. I have blogged about Flickr as an evaluation tool which is the third most read post on this blog and the one with the most comments. This is one area I intend to be looking at in more detail this year as I think it has great potential.

I had a look around all my research reference books this morning and couldn't find any that specifically related to using photographs. I did a quick Google and found some things:

• Creative documentation: Using photography as a tool in action research, Maya Haviland (2004)
  
• Visual ethnography: Using photography in qualitative research, Dona Schwartz (1989)
  
• Using Photography in Art Education Research: A Reflexive Inquiry, Iona Cruickshank & Rachel Mason (2003)
  

Elena, if you have anything to share, especially a literature review, I'm sure readers of this blog would be really grateful (well, I would be anyway!).

Using visuals in evaluation

Digital Eva asks:
"I am also looking (or this is what basically my project aim) at how designer could design a tool in assisting summative evaluation by integrating drawings as the medium to reveal or gather information about audiences' experience."

I have used drawings quite successfully when evaluating exhibitions - it's a great tool for both adults and children. When I evaluated the Indigenous Australians exhibition I gave people a blank page with one question: "Draw how the exhibition made you feel". The responses were really amazing. As part of a front-end evaluation we asked children aged from 2-6 years to keep a journal of their museum experiences. The results were quite incredible as they mixed drawings with photos that they had taken thoughout the Museum. As part of our current research project, Culturally Diverse Audiences and Museums, we again used the journal method, this time to record participants' leisure activities and where museums fitted within their lives. In this study we also used photographs when interviewing people post-visit as a way to prompt memories of their experiences and as a deeper way to discuss their visit. They were photos that they had taken.

Also when doing a trawl, came across this useful resource Social Research Update published quarterly by the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. There is an article there Visual research methods, although a tad old it has some interesting ideas. The article Using diaries in social research is also really good and relevant too.

I think that drawing and visual methods are a really good tool, especially when coupled with interviews (as you still need to get them to interpret their material). I'm wondering if there are any other examples out there??